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Given the lack of sport at the moment, it's little surprise that Netflix's The Last Dance has been so popular in recent weeks.

An in-depth documentary charting basketball great Michael Jordan's final season at the Chicago Bulls has quenched the thirst for sports lovers everywhere, regardless of their prior knowledge of basketball.

At the heart of it, The Last Dance captures the tropes we love to see in sport - rivalries, emotion and characters.

And no one steals every scene he is in more than Dennis Rodman.

The eccentric former Bulls power forward is more known today for his friendship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. That should tell you enough.

Having established a reputation as one of the 'bad boys' of the NBA, he went off the rails, dated Madonna, dyed his hair every colour under the sun and even wore a wedding dress to publicise his autobiography.

To call Rodman a maverick is an understatement of epic proportions.

That erratic personality proved too much for many. He failed at the San Antonio Spurs before Phil Jackson and the Bulls took a chance on him.

But, for me, the two most interesting facets of this documentary, beyond Rodman going on a 48-hour bender in Las Vegas during the 1998 NBA season, is his forensic attitude to the game and how Jackson got the best out of him.

Because, unlike Rodman partying with Carmen Electra in some Vegas casino, those facets allow us to recognise parallels in our own sports.

Some of those personality traits alone might cause you to link Rodman to a Welsh rugby maverick like, for example, Gavin Henson.

Yet, there was one specific Rodman moment that made me think of Henson and it was none of the above.

It was when he explained the work that goes into his sixth sense-like ability to collect rebounds on the court

Watching him run through every possible scenario in his head and the outcome he'd ingrained into his brain is captivating, his arms gesticulating at great speed as he works his way through each different rebound like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

“I’d just sit there and react, react,” he explains.

“I just practised a lot about the angle of the ball and the trajectory of it. You got a Larry Bird, it’s gonna spin. You got a Magic (Johnson), it’ll maybe spin. When Michael (Jordan) shoots over here, I position myself right there.

“Now it hit the rim, it’s boom. Click, go back this way. Boom, here, here. Click, go that way. Boom, that way. Click here, this way. So basically I just start learning how to put myself in a position to get the ball.”

Rodman knew his basketball, learning outcomes until they became instinct, and it reminded me of a story about Henson.

Not that long ago, the former Ospreys coach Sean Holley joined us in the WalesOnline offices as a guest on our daily Facebook Live show.

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After the show had finished, we got chatting about in-depth analysis - something I'm fascinated by in modern sport and something Holley has made his name in.

When it came to how the Ospreys players performed at evaluating their own performance, one name was head and shoulders out in front.

As a task, Holley would give his players an A4 sheet of paper to fill in with analysis of their own performance.

Some would manage half a side of writing and deem it sufficient. Others would just about fill the page.

However, Henson would not only fill the one side of the sheet of paper, but the other side would be covered in writing as well. You'd struggle to see any white of the paper beyond the black ink for all the analysis he had done. The moral of that tale was that Henson was meticulously forensic when it came to his rugby.

It's something that's often overlooked when it comes to talking about mavericks. They can be portrayed as careless protagonists, boasting god-given talent which they ultimately waste.

Maybe they didn't hit the heights they might have, but if Rodman and Henson made things look easy on the pitch, it was only due to a scientific approach away from the field.

And their biggest success came when they found coaches who identified that work rate and knew how to harness it through compromise - that second facet of the documentary.

Others had tried and failed to harness it before. Graham Henry capped Henson, but couldn't work out his best position, while Steve Hanson didn't take him to the 2003 World Cup.

As for Rodman, he was outstanding under Chuck Daly at the 'bad boys of basketball' Detroit Pistons. But when Daly resigned, Rodman went off the rails.

Eventually they found coaches who understood them. Mike Ruddock and Warren Gatland got the best out of Henson while Phil Jackson won three NBA championships with Rodman.

Speaking about Gattland's recognition of Henson's work in the book, Behind the Dragon, former Wales second-row Ian Evans said: "Gatland immediately picked up on Gav's incredible work rate.

"As a forward, it was the kind of stuff I'd never have noticed if it hadn't been highlighted in a debrief. He was a really intelligent rugby player, and he'd work so hard off the ball, trying to find mismatches.

"His work rate in defence was unbelievable, too."

Gatland knew as much. He didn't buy the public persona - he knew the tan, the boots and the hair belied a quiet, shy person. He empowered him early on in his reign.

The Wales coach would often ask Henson how long he wanted to train for. If the mercurial playmaker replied '45 minutes', then the training session was 45 minutes on the dot. Not a minute more.

Jackson would employ similar tactics with Rodman.

"Before Dennis arrived at training camp, I had a long discussion with the players," Jackson wrote in his book, Eleven Rings.

"I warned them that he was probably going to ignore some of the rules because it was hard for him to abide by certain guidelines. I would probably have to make some exceptions for him at times, I said.

"'You're going to have to be grown up about this," I added. And they were."

Perhaps the reason Rodman ultimately had more success than Henson was how loose the leash was allowed to be for Rodman.

We see in the documentary Jackson allowed Rodman to take a 48-hour trip to Vegas in the middle of the 1998 season - right as the Bulls were battling multiple headlines in their pressure-cooker bid for a sixth NBA title that decade.

Granted, Rodman saw an inch and took a mile - prompting Jordan to drag him out of his bedroom to training after his return from Vegas to Chicago turned into a home staycation, but Rodman got the break he needed and returned refreshed and motivated to help win that sixth ring.

Evans noted about Henson that "he was so disciplined that every now and again, inevitably, he'd have a blowout". Unfortunately, those blowouts often ended up being headline worthy.

Could you imagine Henson, or any other British player, being allowed the respite Rodman was granted with his Vegas dalliance? Quite simply, you couldn't.

British sport as a whole has an attitude to mavericks that wants conformity over compromise. Perhaps that's why Henson ended up taking an 18-month sabbatical in 2009, frustrated with many things on top of his injury issues.

"Our relationship (between Henson and the Wales coaches) didn't break down as such but I suppose it coincided with why I took a break from rugby in 2009. I had disagreements on how we were playing at the time.

"It kind of happened with the game against Italy. I got so annoyed about the tactics all week. I was going to the coaches, not in front of the group, just the coaches, saying we needed to do things differently but we didn't. They said 'this is what is going to win us the game'. So, again, I go out and deliver the game plan for them and we just got away with it.

"I didn't want losing to Italy to be on my CV and I was so annoyed after that game. We had Ireland the following week and, again, the tactics were wrong. I didn't voice this in front of the group, I just went to the coaches and gave them my opinion. "

After his sabbatical, Henson had more clubs than Wales caps. Gatland, ever his own man, was still willing to call him up in spite of it all, but injuries ultimately brought his career to a close.

There's a school of thought that American sport deals with the individual far better than British sport. The Last Dance reaffirms that, documenting Jackson's approach to coaching - drawing upon humanistic psychology, Native American philosophy and Zen meditation to get the best out of each individual.

Jackson referred to Rodman as 'Heyokas', a 'backward-walking man' in Native American culture, when others treated him like a child. He was treated as a man, albeit one with a slightly looser leash at times.

When Henson was at his best, he too was empowered by compromise. Maybe Gatland compromised as much as he could, maybe more leeway could have got more out of Henson.

But the Last Dance, above all, has brought home how dedicated Rodman - and, in turn, Henson - were to making their craft an instinct.

Whether you think their talent was wasted or not, you have to admire how incredibly hard they worked to hone it.